Old Deer

Old Deer: Balring Road, an avenue of beech trees on the Pitfour Estate

This website is primarily intended to serve as
an
electronic notice and discussion board for the residents of Old Deer
and the surrounding villages, but we are proud of our beautiful
village, and we welcome visitors, and for that reason we are
including information that might be of interest to people from
outside our immediate neighbourhood.

The picturesque village of Old Deer lies in the centre of Buchan, a
district of Aberdeenshire. The village is about equidistant from the
coastal towns of Peterhead to the east, Fraserburgh to the north
east, Banff to the north west, and the country town of Turriff about
due west.

A map of Old
Deer and
the surrounding neighbourhood
will be of use to anybody wishing to visit the village.

It is almost as true now as it was in 1858, when the Rev. Dr
John B. Pratt wrote in Buchan:

And here we come upon the rich and fertile Valley of Deer,
beautified by the numerous woods and plantations of Aden and Pitfour,
and the properties of Knock and Crichie. From this point to the Abbey
Bridge—a distance of three miles—the scenery is
strikingly pleasing. Gentle undulations here and there swelling into
hills, the ever-varying course of the stream, with the broad and massive
features of the thick hanging woods, delight and satisfy the eye. In the
centre of this scene, softly embosomed in trees, lies the ancient
village of Deer, with its houses and churches, exhibiting all the varied
hues and colours which slate, tile and thatch can produce, and skirted
by the grounds of Pitfour and Aden; farther on we come upon the
crumbling
ruins of the old Cistercian Abbey; and on the left, looking back as it
were, is the quiet low-lying village of Stuartfield, with the old
mansion house of Crichie among the woods on the rising ground beyond it.